The voice recorder in the cockpit black box of the crashed EgyptAir flight has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.
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The Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee began inspecting the voice recorder, reviving hopes on resolving the mystery behind the plane’s crash.
Committee sources confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the cockpit recorder was found a day after officials said they had found the wreckage of the Airbus A320.
EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people, including crew, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea about 280 kms from the Egyptian seacoast on May 19 with 56 passengers and 10 cabin crew on board.
Officials say the so called “black box” – one of the two on board the plane – has been damaged but that the vessel searching for the wreckage managed to safely recover the memory unit.
The device is being taken to Alexandria… The two were tucked into the plane’s tail.
The chairman of EgyptAir, Safwat Musallam, said Thursday that the search team has not picked up anything from the flight data recorder, but he welcomed the news of the recovery of the cockpit voice recorder.
Since the start of the underwater search, however, investigators have only been able to isolate the pings of a single recorder, suggesting that the beacon on the flight data recorder either may not be emitting a signal, or that something, perhaps a large piece of wreckage or rock formations on the seabed, is muting or obstructing its propagation.
According to BBC, the flight crew did not appear to have sent a distress call, but a terror attack has not been ruled out even if no extremist group has claimed responsibility for the crash.
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Radar data showed the aircraft had been cruising normally in clear skies before it turned 90 degrees left, then a full 360 degrees to the right as it plummeted from 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to 15,000 feet (4,572 meters).
